BRUNSWICK – About 150 people attended a conference last month in Freeport on “Adapting To Climate Change.” It was organized by Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, an independent and neutral research organization based in Brunswick.

“Adaptation” in this context refers to preparing for changes in precipitation and temperature that we already see unfolding in the climatological data for New England.

Climate skeptics’ eyes will roll at the thought of 150 people wasting a day talking about a bogus phenomenon made up by pointy-headed scientists who belly up to the government granting agency trough, instead of making themselves useful and productive members of society.

But if you’re a free market “let the best win” advocate of the capitalist system that made the United States strong and great, keep reading.

The conference was attended by the somewhat traditional land management and conservation crowd you would expect to see at a climate change conference in Maine. But the keynote speaker, Bruce Kahn, was anything but traditional.

Kahn is director and senior investment analyst at Deutsche Asset Management in New York. What was he doing in L.L. Bean-town?

Kahn explained that his firm is legally responsible to invest “your” money prudently.

He proceeded to explain in very matter-of-fact language that Deutsche Assets Management views climate change as what is called a “material risk.” Deutsche Assets Management therefore takes climate change deadly seriously.

Kahn has no time or use for the alarmist-skeptic debate about climate change, nor for polls sampling the shifting winds of public opinion about climate change.

He only has time for hard science. Science is what he needs to inform him about how to minimize financial risk, or, in some cases, identify financial opportunity. An ecologist by training, Kahn has the wherewithal to interpret the science as well. (Wall Street employs ecologists?)

Whether you agree ethically, the fact is that making money (or not losing it) is a most powerful driver of human behavior.

Perhaps you’re a climate change skeptic. You don’t give a wit about polar bears. Even if you did, you think climate change is just the latest environmentalists’ ploy to impose their worldview on you and everyone else. OK.

But to the extent you have a stake in your own financial future, you might want to take a careful look at what climate scientists are saying. Deutsche Assets Management is.

 

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